Founders Dream
In 2022, I am looking forward to people coming together for the greater good. For Orlando, to shine like a beacon of HOPE for the rest of our nation and world. Showing what can be accomplished when we use our differences as points of strength and understanding to bridge the divide and come together as one community.
I believe that our differences are what make us great and together we are stronger than apart. With greater understanding and knowledge, we must not look at what separates us but what brings us together. Right now, we are in the midst of a crisis. Mental health, once thought of only with the homeless, is now being discussed with school children.
A recent survey found that the US is experiencing an urgent mental health crisis. Nationwide, 1 in 5 suffers from a mental health condition. With addiction, overdose, alcohol(ism)/consumption, and suicide, we lost over 240,000 American lives last year.
In 2021, over 136K kids went to foster care as a result of addiction or overdose death of a parent(s). 15-month-old Nicholas Crowder lost his life after his mother, Tiffany Spears overdosed. Education to teach understanding of addiction and mental health. There have been far too many mental health emergencies where the police respond with violence. Instead of dealing with a mental health crisis the person winds up dead. Walter Walace Jr., Ricardo Munoz & Angelo Quinto are just a few who had family members call for help, not threats but HELP and they end up dead. This is unacceptable. Who calls the police for help to have them shoot and kill a loved one?
We must better equip our first responders, especially, police that use of force is the absolute LAST OPTION. Not the first. These are mental health crisis and its events like this that have created the calls to defund the police. Can you blame them what events like this happen over and over again but defunding the police is not the answer? Its better training, its education. We can teach the strategies, techniques and ways to deal with mental health emergencies. We can work together instead against one another. We're all in this together and the sooner we realize that we can start getting to work and solving problems.
Training programs that teach healthy coping strategies, ways to communicate when in crisis, ways to learn about recovery and break down barriers to entry and stigmas that come with it. Through healing and growth strategies we can teach kids (and adults too) the tools and healthy techniques necessary to deal with today's world of increased anxiety, depression, addiction, isolation and so much more. We need to take action now! This is URGENT. Worldwide every 40** seconds, someone takes their life. In America, 38* people lose their life to overdose every day.
This year, Largest Heart will introduce the Blueprint. A series of suggestion strategies, along with tips, tools & trainings for dealing with PTSD, addiction, alcoholism, and trauma. We believe that recovery is an inside job and a journey of self-discovery that everyone deserves. We should all have that freedom and information available should they so choose. From sickness, injury, trauma, or addiction, we all have the power to transform, heal, and change our lives. It all begins with the belief that we can. We can and we will!
"Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life." James Allen
Impossible is nothing and it all starts with FAITH. "The believe, the assurance, the title deed to things, not yet revealed to the senses." Hebrews 11:1
Just ask Walt Disney what can be accomplished by faith. It's with this faith and belief that together, we can change the world, one person, one life, one opportunity at a time. It's amazing what a hope and love can do. There is a mental health crisis going on and it's only going to get solved if we work together.
Please join with us as we raise awareness and go next level at making a difference one opportunity at a time. God bless and thank you for being a Largest Heart!
Peter T. Cook
* https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/prescription/maps.html
**https://www.who.int/news/item/09-09-2019-suicide-one-person-dies-every-40-seconds